"Felger Carbon" wrote in message
nk.net...
"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
news

The last two years have clearly illustrated some major advantages
for UAVs.
They can't do everything by any means but the "natural advantage" of
an
unmanned platform lies in great persistence, being able to stay on
station
for very long times so that the platform is there exactly when
needed. The
ISR community has found that there are step-change improvements in
coverage
over satellites and manned aircraft that derive from keeping a
platform
overhead all day long. Likewise, hitting fleeting, moving targets
benefits
from having a launcher available_right now_, not five minutes off
and that's
hard to do with manned platforms and_may_be easier with UCAVs. It's
a_may_because the analysis is in progress but apparently OSD decided
that in
light of bad management, bad programmatic news and repeated program
replans,
to cut its losses.

I've read the above three times, and I still can't see where UAVs get
credit for saving our side's human lives. Heli pilots fully
expendable??

I don't think I said that. UAVs have an advantage over manned platforms for
extremely hazardous missions like SEAD because of the reduced risk to crews
but another advantage is the option of extremely long mission times because
the "crew" can change without bringing the aircraft back to base. Manned
aircraft do put aircrew at risk but you have the advantage of a human being
on the spot. One hump UCAVs will have to get over is the reluctance that
"higher" has in turning an autonomous weapon loose with reduced human
supervision. Certainly at first, the "trigger" will remain firmly in human
hands. Probably the_last_"trigger" to be turned over to robotic killers will
be air-to-air weapons, since the pilots' union will be extremely reluctant
to share the sky with them.